Plot Discovered to Sabotage Plane Factory

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 99, 28 April 1941, Page 5

Plot Discovered to Sabotage Plane Factory

SEAMEN READY TO CONVOY SHIPS Received Sunday, 9.30 p.m. NEW YORK, April 26. Tho Seattle police announce that they have discovered a plot by criminal elements and saboteurs to close down the Boeing bomber plant aud the Todd ship- , yards. The police have ordered tlie arrest of ail suspicious persons ou sight for investigation. Captain May, national vice-president of the American Federation of Labour Masters, Mates tmd Pilots’ Union, said to-day that his organisation oi VOOU seamen was willing to man convoys across the Atlantic. “My outfit,” ne said, “had voted to back up the national defence programme a hundred per cent, and if that means snipping on convoys, O.K. We will take them on.” The Inter-American Economic Advisory Committee representing 21 American nations to-day unanimously approved a resolution recognising tha right of eacn to requisition immobilised foreign shipping in Western Hemisphere ports. The New York Herald Tribune reports that the employees of sixty out of 61 General Motors plants had voted authorising a strike, whereupon the Labour {Secretary (Miss ± ranees Perkins) certified me dispute to the National Defence Mediation Board. General Motors employ 100,000 men iu 61 plants aud have 700,000,606 dollars' wort a of defence contracts. The Federal authorities are investigating reports ox pro-Axis elements trying to induce seamen not to u on ships sailing between the United dales and Katin .American ports. There is a ser.ous shortage ox seamen iu some ports, teamen are being offered more money to stay ashore uoing nothing than they get working, in oiher cases they are being offered otuer .employment at better pay. In some cases of snips manned by seamen whose fiomo countries have been swallowed up by the Axis, threats of harm to me i ox relatives aoroad have been made. Defence officials disclosed teat the continuation of the coal strike will force nineteen major arms plants to go on part-time opera*ions within 48 horns and compel the steel industry to cut operations to 85 per cent, next week.